Cat Driver when you wrote, "Tyranny can only thrive if the oppressed submit"
Speaking as a Palestinian, I whole heartedly agree, and one can but hope that America, and its lack of CI Agency, will see the light and stop meddling in Middle Eastern affairs which don't concern them.
Much of what the West does in this respect is outwardly done in the name of 'freedom' - when it really should read, OIL - and as a process of which it props-up despotic states like Saudi Arabia, etc, e.g. does anybody else remember the amount of aid that the West used to chuck at Iraq during the Iran / Iraq wars ? Oh how the times have changed !
So let's do stop fooling ourselves about why the West is so desperate to be involved in the Middle East, because you can be sure that if it had no OIL, then the West wouldn't give a sh!t about what goes on there, just like much of Africa.
Also, it's been said before in these forums, but if the West instead of supplying arms to various Middle East nations spent just one tenth of what those munitions cost in supplying properly delivered aid then a lot of what we're seeing now would not be happening.
Perhaps it's a case that ultimately, and as per the proverb, as yea sow, so shall yea reap !
Ps. Roc, it's just a shame you got your big horses arse kicked in Vietnam, in what would otherwise have been yet another classic example of American foreign policy !
[ 24 November 2001: Message edited by: 5by5 ]